Vegan Taste Week

In November 2014, we launched the Vegan Taste Week (VTW) – a German website and newsletter program that encourages people to try a (more) plant-based diet. People who sign up for the newsletter get an e-mail per day for seven days with recipes, tips and background information. After this first week, they get one additional newsletter every month.

The newsletter e-mails include links to two surveys so we can collect feedback and get an idea of the dietary change we helped create. We use the feedback (along with the opening and click rates) to continuously improve the program.

We use several channels to gain sign-ups for the Vegan Taste Week:

the Pig Mobile Tour,

our local groups,

our (free) Google Grants ads budget of $40,000 per month,

website pop-ups,

our leaflets,

our Facebook page.

In 2017, 79,208 people signed up for the Vegan Taste Week (we only count e-mail addresses we can successfully send e-mails to, and we subtract unsubscribers).

We assess the outcome of the Vegan Taste Week on the basis of the opening and click rate of our newsletters and of two separate surveys. The opening rate of the first e-mail is around 40.3%. The rate decreases slightly up to the final e-mail, but is still at around 27.4%. The average click rate is 6.6% (basis: all recipients). In the future, we plan to further increase click rates in particular (key indicator of the extent to which people engage with our e-mails).

The results of our VTW survey were extremely satisfactory in 2017:

45% of respondents who were not vegan before embarking on the VTW stated that they had followed a “fully vegan” or “mostly vegan” diet over the course of the week.

Of those who had already considered going vegan, 61% felt “more motivated” to go vegan and 22% “completely motivated.”

Of those who had never considered going vegan, 78% said that they would eat “vegan more often” in the future. 8% stated that they would go “fully vegan.”

In 2018, the Polish Version of the Vegan Taste Week online programme went live under the name Tydzień na Weganie (“vegan week”).

Facebook group: Vegan Tips for All

The “Vegan-Tipps für alle” (“Vegan Tips for All”) Facebook group, which we launched in 2017 and moderate ourselves, is an interactive addition to the Vegan Taste Week. The members engage in discussions and share tips and recommendations on a range of vegan-related issues. We make sure that only properly researched and no pseudoscientific information is shared (the Internet and social media are awash with unsupported information, particularly on the subject of health). We also suggest topics for discussion ourselves and, if necessary, provide references to our or other well-researched websites. Since we cannot offer one-to-one support for our VTW participants, we consider a Facebook group to be a highly effective middle way.